


another long weekend

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Claire Temple POV, Claire Temple falls in love with every superhero she meets, Crossover, Established Relationship, F/M, Female Friendship, Future Fic, Gen, Minor Phil Coulson/Skye | Daisy Johnson, bisexual Daisy Johnson reference, i tag it just in case but it's really minor, minor Daisy/Coulson
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-23
Updated: 2016-03-23
Packaged: 2018-05-28 11:43:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6327631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Claire is beginning to suspect she is the problem.</p><p>(aka Claire Temple meets Daisy Johnson because I'm weak)</p>
            </blockquote>





	another long weekend

**i.**

It’s shaping to be one of those weekends.

The heat, the full moon, the drug deals gone wrong, the vague sensation the only thing lacking for Claire to become Nicholas Cage in that Scorsese movie is the Van Morrison soundtrack, that’s how bad things seem and then on Sunday you end up wondering if those stains in your scrubs are vomit or blood. Oh yeah and whatever is going on in the neighborhood that means any moment now she’s going to turn around and Matt will be there looking half-dead and charming and asking for favors.

But apparently that’s not the superhero who’s going to ask for her help today.

 

**ii.**

At first Claire doesn’t recognize her as such.

She is just another victim of whatever is going on near the Tunnel this time around.

A weirdo, for sure. As soon as she is awake Claire writes her off as just that, no doubt about it. Hours later she will still think Daisy is a weirdo, but she will readjust the motives why.

For now she is just an injured woman she finds trying to get out of her gurney without being seen to.

“Take it easy,” Claire tells her, blocking her exit. “Someone threw a building at you.”

“Some threw _myself_ at me,” the woman mutters.

“What?”

“Nothing. I have to get out of here,” she says, gritting her teeth through the pain.

“Well, that’s not going to happen,” Claire tells her. “You have _at least_ a broken arm that I know of. We’re waiting for a slot in rays. A doctor should probably see you but lucky you, today is a day of the week that ends with Y so you’re stuck with me.”

“X-rays? No, I can’t be - _official_. No papers. You can’t write me in. Just give me something for the pain, I have to go back.”

Claire would of course write her of one of her regulars, some poor soul looking for a fix thinking a nurse can’t tell the difference. For some reason this one doesn’t strike her as a drug addict. The way she is looking to get away from Claire, the way she is eyeing the door, her priority is leaving, not getting high. It makes Claire a bit curious, she admits. And tonight he doesn’t have the time for curious.

“Look, with the kind of Friday we’re having I can’t get you anything for the pain right now,” Claire explains. “Here have some aspirin in the meantime.”

The other woman studies the pills, looking suspicious. It’s Claire’s personal stash - a trick she learned when she was a rookie. Painkillers run out fast and become a limited (very controlled and _delayed_ ) luxury in this neighborhood. She always brings some from home in case a patient can use them without having to wait for the official stuff. She’s not the only one. Other nurses bring in bandages and gauze themselves.

“I haven’t booked you in,” she tells her. She takes the plastic bag tied to the gurney in her hands. “These are pretty interesting.” She drops the high-tech gauntlets on the bed. Whoever this woman is she obviously has better resources than someone like Matt. “Where’s the rest of your superhero uniform?”

She sits up and takes some tentative steps, struggling. “I’m not supposed to be here.”

“You’re not supposed to be moving either.”

“I’m not - I’m not dangerous, I just want to go home before one of the bad guys - or worse the press - find out I’m here.”

She goes back to the bed, sitting on the edge. Claire can almost feel her shake with frustration.

“My name is Daisy,” she says. “What’s your name?”

Claire is surprised, she is normally the one who offers her name to calm people down. Obviously this woman is used to dealing with people who need that, being calmed down. Claire becomes more and more curious; and that never ends well for her.

“Claire,” she replies. “Is Daisy your real name?”

The other woman smiles. “Funnily enough it is.”

“What the hell happened to you?”

Daisy opens her mouth and then she closes it very slowly, avoiding Claire’s gaze.

Claire turns around, because she doesn’t have the time to play around, she only has seven patients she should be attending to right now, all of them more serious than a broken arm. Daisy stops her with her good hand.

“I can’t explain about my arm,” she says, sounding like she really can’t explain, rather than she doesn’t want to. Okay, Claire thinks, one chance. “It’s not safe. But you can’t book me in, and you can’t write down any of this stuff.”

She looks at her, unimpressed.

“I’m one of the good guys, okay?” Daisy insists.

Claire prides herself in being able to tell the difference by now. And this one, well, she looks like one of the good guys. _Here we go again_ , Claire suddenly thinks, her plans to keep her head down for the weekend gone in a heartbeat (and it is a heartbeat, damnit), pressing a firm hand against the woman’s shoulder.

“i’m one of the good guys, too,” she tells Daisy, making her lie down again. She closes the curtains around the gurney. “If anyone comes by, pretend you’re asleep.”

She can tell Daisy is still pondering whether to trust Claire that much or not. She studies her face. Claire is almost about to tell her she has no alternative but it’s only Friday, she’ll leave hot impatience for tomorrow night. For now she tries to put on her most trustworthy face. Which is her normal face, after all.

Daisy nods. 

The trick, probably, was not asking exactly who she was. In a world of superheroes - most of them masked or off the radar - that kind of respect goes a long way. She could be lying too, maybe she’s not one of the good ones after all.

“Thank you, Claire.”

She leaves, crowded by the usual kind of craziness and making her forget all about the not so ordinary for a while.

 

**iii.**

She only realizes who Daisy _really_ is when her guy shows up. Claire doesn’t have time for much superhero chat or rumors but this one stick with her: that she had been a local, too, in her childhood. Other than that virtually nothing was known of this woman.

Or almost virtually nothing.

There’s one thing that’s for sure about this particular superhero: wherever she goes, _he_ follows.

Claire watches a man of around 50 stroll down the ER casually, glancing over every patient and finally

“Hey,” Claire shouts, following him inside the curtain. “Hey, _excuse me_.”

The man - he looks somewhat like an accountant - ignores her completely.

“You took your time,” Daisy chastises him as soon as she sees him, propping herself on one elbow to sit up..

“No one saw where they were taking you,” the man argues.

“That’s good, that’s good, maybe no one knows I’m here,” she says. “I’m so sorry. I know I shouldn’t have come, I just-”

The man shakes his head and instinctively goes to grab Daisy’s hand but he stops himself when he sees the bruises on her knuckles.

“They used it?” he asks, wrapping his fingers around her upper arm instead..

Daisy nods slowly.

“Well, we’ll have to figure out a way to work around that, obviously,” he says. Daisy smiles a weary smile. “First we have to get you out here.”

“You too?” Claire interjects. “She’s not going anywhere until we get her into a cast.”

“Sorry,” the man turns to Claire, looking embarrassed that he was so focused on making sure Daisy was okay that he forgot to introduce himself. “I’m A- I’m Phil.”

“I’m Claire,” she says, then turns to Daisy. “And I’m guessing you are Quake.”

Okay, so this is new, a superhero blushing. 

“We don’t, I don’t call myself that,” she protests.

“I didn’t make the connection at first, not until he came running,” Claire says, pointing at Phil. “There haven’t been any close pictures of Quake but… an Asian woman with a middle-aged man in a suit always hanging around? Not that hard.”

“I don’t always wear a suit,” Coulson says, like that’s the important part of it.

Maybe _he_ is the weirdo here.

 

**iv.**

It was too much to hope the press would leave them alone. It was too much to hope that the gods of New York would give Claire that kind of break.

At least they are not looking for Quake, not really. Just hanging around the hospital because they’d heard some of the victims had ended up in this place and wanted to interview them.

Claire decides to leave that aside for the moment - this kind of life, it teaches you that, to focus on the immediate - and she focuses on putting Daisy’s arm in a cast. Something about the way Daisy handles pain tells her this is not her first rodeo. She seems to know what’s going on with her injuries better than Claire anyway. She watches patiently as Claire does her job. It’s one of Claire’s favorites, too. She finds it soothing, casting broken arms and legs. It’s tiresome and meticulous, but slow, something to give her a break. 

“I’m from here, you know?” Daisy tells her, as Claire works on her left hand. Daisy is sitting cross-legged on the gurney, no proper way of doing this. “I just - I don’t come back as often as I should.”

“I know you’re from here,” Claire tells her, figuring this is a good time to bring it up. 

The other woman raises an eyebrow and Claire sort of remembers that too.

“You don’t remember me, do you?”

“Have we met?”

Claire smiles.

She should have remembered her sooner. When she said “no papers”. Yes, the same girl.

“It was another hot summer night,” she explains. “You showed up in the back entrance with a broken ankle, asking some unfortunate nurse how much it would cost to treat you without telling anyone.”

Daisy looks away, flushing. She was around eighteen then, and pretty dumb. Oh well, it was ten years ago, Claire was pretty dumb herself around the time.

“You were that unfortunate nurse,” Daisy realizes.

“And I knew you were running away from the cops at that time, that’s why you wanted everything _off the books_.”

“Did I actually use those words?”

Claire makes an amused grimace at her. “I believe you did.”

“Oh god.”

“Luckily I was too green to know nurses are not supposed to help just _anybody_ so I did help you. I didn’t take the twenty-eight dollars you were offering me, though.”

“Twenty-eight? _Wow_. I was on the money then. Wish I had them now.”

“Careful,” Claire tells her, twisting her arm so she could get to the underside.

She remembers some bits of that night; no wonder it had stayed buried in the back of her mind for so long. It was a busy, complicated night, and it didn’t even need superheros for that. Hectic, which explains why Claire could snuck a teenager into one of the unused rooms at the time. The girl had been very reluctant to tell Claire of her situation, but by that time she had known enough homeless youth from the neighborhood that she didn’t know the explanation. She also knew cops shouldn’t technically harass the homeless but they did anyway. The girl was going to disappear as soon as Claire fixed her ankle, she looked like she knew what she was doing - any offers of long-term help, she had probably heard them all. Claire didn’t press.

“I remember you took care of me,” Daisy says, an expression way to solemn and old for her years (Claire suddenly remembers that too, or maybe the past is being painted over by getting to know this woman, now). “You wanted to bring me some food covertly but it was like three in the morning and-”

“I didn’t have the key to the supplies.”

“Yeah,” Daisy says, her face lighting up with remembrance. “We gathered all the spare change we had between us and you raided the vending machine for me.”

Claire laughs. “I had completely forgotten about that part.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t remember you on the spot,” the other woman says, shaking her head guiltily. Claire doesn’t blame her. She has changed quite a bit in ten years. Not as much as Daisy has, apparently. “I came back some time later, to thank you properly, but they told me you didn’t work at the hospital anymore. I thought that maybe… maybe I had gotten you into trouble.”

She looks down at the cast on her hand, like she’s been carrying that feeling for many years.

“ _I_ got myself into trouble,” Claire tells her. “They caught me moonlighting at a clinic because I needed the money, and nurse in practice were not supposed to do that. It wasn’t you.”

Daisy’s face relaxes a bit and she lifts her chin.

“Still, I should have found you and thanked you properly. But I was pretty screwed up at the time.”

Claire had figured that out pretty quickly,naive as she was ten years ago.

“That’s why I wanted to come and help with… whatever is going on out there today.”

“Don’t ask me,” Claire says and they both chuckle. Daisy doesn’t know it but she has a couple of friends continuing the fight.

“I really love this place,” Daisy says, looking troubled about it. She gets it. That’s Hell’s Kitchen for you. “But a lot of bad stuff happened here. I couldn’t come back until - until my life was good, you know?”

Claire doesn’t know what’s so good about a life where you get buildings thrown at you but then again she knows and loves Matt, who smiles through broken cheekbones and split lips, and she knows and loves Luke, who is happier the more trouble he is in. Maybe Daisy is _one of those_.

 

**v.**

She leaves the cast to settle and starts thinking of a way to sneak Daisy out of the hospital. The press still hovers. A couple of patients have agreed to interviews. Karen sends her a text asking if there’s some good scoop (Karen likes that word, scoop, Claire knows it makes her feel more like a proper journalist and not someone who waltzed into the job by accident - Claire doesn’t have the heart to tell her no one has used the word since 1943). The long weekend keeps biting her ass. She is returning her phone to her locker when she thinks she has an idea. Maybe not brilliant, maybe predictable. But an idea.

Before she can tell her she bumps into Daisy’s shadow getting a cup of coffee from the machine.

“Hey, listen-”

“You know your coffee is terrible, right?” Phil says.

Claire puts her hands on her hips, a bit offended on behalf of her hospital.

“Yet this is your third cup.”

He shrugs, taking a big gulp of it. “What can I say? I have terribly low standards.”

She looks around, coming closer to the man to speak in private. Up close he looks less like an accountant and more like something she would describe as “perpetually overwhelmed”. She guesses Daisy has something to do with that. And tired. Claire feels a pang of kinship when she notices Phil’s tiredness. She gets this strange feeling he would have been a great nurse. Tired and calm.

“I think I have an idea about how we can get her out,” she half-whispers to him.

“Without the press noticing?”

“Without the press noticing,” Claire replies.

The man fixes her a thoughtful look. Claire feels a bit of a chill.

“Why are you doing this, Claire?” Phil asks. “Not that I don’t appreciate it. Or that I distrust your motives,” he adds, looking like he totally mistrusts her motives. “But I’ve watched you since I’ve arrived, Claire. You have a lot on your plate as it is. Why put yourself out on a limb for a stranger?”

She’s not a stranger, Claire things, funnily enough.

She sighs. 

“I’m doing this because… I’m one of the good guys,” she tells him, wearily.

Most days she wishes she wasn’t.

Today is not one of those.

 

**vi.**

Phil comes in when she is still helping Daisy dress - that seems fine, somehow Claire doubts it’s the first time this guy is seeing those legs.

“The coast is clear,” he says. “We’d better hurry.” He stops and looks at her. “You look really good in those scrubs.”

Daisy rolls her eyes at him fondly. “Easy there.”

“Sorry, they’re not exactly clean,” Claire tells her, as she ties the laces on the pants since Daisy obviously can’t. She washed them, yes, but around last week. “Here, have the hoodie too.”

“The Hooded Hero,” Phil says.

“Stop it.”

Claire would say he is trying to distract Daisy from the obvious pain she is experiencing, maneuvering herself into the clothes.

“Leave the jacket open,” Claire advices. “People will see the scrubs and just assume, they won’t take another look at you.”

“That’s what people see when they look at you?” Daisy says, a thin layer of sweat on her forehead from the effort. “I find that hard to believe,” she adds, kind of flirty.

What do they put it in the water in Hell’s Kitchen? Every goddamn superhero, she swear. Claire starts to think maybe it’s her.

She dutifully transfers Daisy’s weight to Phil, who guides her out of the door, grabbing the bag with Daisy's things with his other hand, following Claire’s lead.

The ER is too hectic to notice a nurse with an obviously fresh cast in her arm getting out of Dodge. Too hectic to notice that “nurse” doesn’t exactly belong. Claire finds them a nice fire exit some of her colleagues use to go have a smoke. Just in case.

“So much for having an extraction plan,” Daisy comments.

“She is the extraction plan,” Phil points at Claire.

This is where things get shitty for Claire this weekend because Daisy has only been in the hospital for a couple of hours yet this feels a lot like saying goodbye to old friends. She opens the door outside, a wave of hot, sticky Manhattan summer breeze hitting her face like a slap.

“Okay, there you go guys, hurry before I change my mind about calling the papers for a juiciy Quake exclusive.”

Phil says goodbye with a firm, trusting handshake. For some reason Claire suspects that’s high praise from the man.

Daisy just stares at her, like she expects Claire to say something.

“I left you something for the ride in the pocket,” she says.

The other woman fishes a Reese’s nut bar Claire got out of the machine. She looks at Claire like she had given her the most expensive piece of jewellry. There’s a somewhat uncomfortable silence for a while afterwards. Claire guesses it’s still better than stitching up drunk back there. Except she still has to do that anyway.

“The other one is mine,” Phil says.

“The other one…?” Daisy finds another snack in the left pocket (she makes a complicated turn to get at it), all chocolate this time

“Great minds,” Claire says, raising an eyebrow at the man.

Daisy laughs, and then she suddenly goes very quiet, looking at Claire like she wants to hug her.

“I promise this time it won’t take me ten years to thank you properly,” she says, so solemnly Claire feels overwhelmed all of the sudden. 

It gets her thinking how much Daisy reminds her of Matt, of Luke, that seriousness, how maybe all heroes are a bit addicted to it. And maybe Claire is addicted to that intensity. She knows she doesn’t want a normal life, a life where the Matts and Lukes and Daisys don’t show up to make a mess out of her day and her heart.

“Well, you’d better, you’re going to owe me a hoodie,” she points out, trying to lighten the moment. Sometimes that intensity is a bit too much. “But for now I want you to promise me to stay out of the hospital, okay?” She pauses. She can be solemn too. “The city needs you, Daisy.”.

Daisy narrows her eyes at her.

“Why? It has you.”

 

**vii.**

That sort of asshole. Leaving with that line. Messing Claire’s whole night. Messing the long weekend. As if Claire didn’t have enough with the heat and the full moon and the drug deals gone wrong and the usual suspects and that magical moment when you can’t tell if it’s blood or vomit staining your scrubs and you’re too tired to care.

Some time ago Claire would have said that superheroes, like bad luck, seemed to chase her.

Now she knows she’s the one doing the chasing.


End file.
